Copyright Law

Irish ISP to Start Blocking Pirate Bay Sep 1st

By soulxtc

Others still refuse, and unlike Eircom, vow to vigorously fight the music industry in court, but considering the Swedish BitTorrent tracker site goes legit August 27th move may be short-lived.

Back in January Irish ISP Eircom agreed to settle a a lawsuit brought against it by music labels EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner who accused it of not doing enough to combat copyright infringement by its subscribers.

As part of the settlement Eircom implemented a ?three-strikes? graduated response system that disconnects customers that fail to heed warnings of illegal file-sharing activity.

It also acquiesced to demands that it block file-sharing websites the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) claims are damaging its business.

It’s the latter agreement that puts Eircom back in the spotlight for it has announced that beginning September 1st it will prevent its customers from accessing Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay.

Lucky for customers of other ISPs Eircom is still alone in its acquiescence to the IRMA and have vowed to put up a fight.

?Should the rights holders proceed with their threat of legal action if UPC fails to block access to Pirate Bay, UPC has every intention of vigorously defending its position in court,? said cable TV operator UPC in a statement to the Irish Times.

The move may be pointless though considering that Global Gaming Factory plans to complete its acquisition of the Pirate Bay August 27th and turn the site into a legitimate online media retailer, new logo and all.

Also, considering there’s a million ways to bypass site filtering technology the IRMA should find a way of giving customers what they want instead of telling them what they can’t have.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on August 20, 2009 (boomark / email).